Prince of Wales

November 29 2002

Richard Burton's immense power onstage and private appetite for self-destruction are laid bare in a one-man show, writes Tony Davis.

They say the Welsh don't travel too well, in that they have a great longing for their homeland," Ray Henwood says. But the New Zealand-based Welshman seems to have travelled just fine as he sits in his Australian hotel room in preparation to play a compatriot who achieved almost mythical fame and notoriety in the United States.

Playing Welsh hell-raisers is something of a specialty. In the 1980s Henwood toured here as Dylan Thomas in the one-man play Nogood Boyo, working his way through an entire bottle of whisky each performance.

This time he's Richard Burton, who drank life and vodka in equal measure and was eventually defeated by both. And during parts of our conversation Henwood really is Burton, lowering the pitch of his already delightful Welsh lilt, projecting a beautiful stage voice from the very base of his diaphragm.

"I'm in love with words," he quotes Burton as saying. "I'm in love with vowels knocked out by consonants. I believe they were made for each other, and I was made for them."

It's an odd but engaging experience, hearing someone who sounds like a world-famous orator and storyteller, but talks about him in the third person. So pull up a chair, a bottle of vodka and a very expensive woman and try to imagine Richard Burton, channelled through Ray Henwood, explaining the play of his life.");document.write("

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"What Mark Jenkins, the writer, has done in Playing Burton is try to explore why this highly talented man virtually destroyed his career twice.

"He went to London and Laurence Olivier tipped him to be the next classical actor of his age; it was understood he would inherit Olivier's crown.

"Instead he went to Hollywood, much to the disgust of the English theatre world in those days. He got very bitter about that; for example, when he was doing the Hollywood films, he also did with John Gielgud a Hamlet on Broadway which still holds the record for the number of performances.

"But the Brits in those days never considered that an achievement.

"After that he did not achieve his potential. He made a lot of films, a couple of which I think are outstanding. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are brilliant films.

"His life with Elizabeth Taylor eventually finished, I think, in boredom for him - not boredom with her, but boredom with what he was doing artistically."

During the play, Burton describes his money-no-object life with Taylor (the fabulously wealthy London-born actress he married twice) as an increasingly difficult quest "to ascend to new heights of vulgarity".

"When he says things like that," Henwood amplifies, "he is harking back to his socialist roots - the man was born in depression in a family of 11 in a mining valley. He bought her so many jewels, was surrounded by Monets.

"At one point he turns to the audience and says, 'You know we'll be sent to heaven in our own fur-lined passenger twin jet'."

Whereas Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton both moved to London before spending time in the US, Henwood ended up in New Zealand in 1962. He was 25 and would eventually become one of the country's most respected stage actors (his performance in Playing Burton won him New Zealand's Actor of the Year award this year).

He saw Burton just once, performing in Swansea in the early 1950s in The Lady's Not for Burning.

"He had an amazing presence. That is a word used a lot; I saw him only once, and many people have said it. Kenneth Tynan, for example, said when he came on as Henry V at Stratford 'he brought his own cathedral with him'."

Burton was a renowned raconteur and the play exploits it to the hilt.

"As an actor you feel that sense of power Burton had with an audience, because of the strength of the writing," Henwood says. "I remember one man saying after a show overseas: 'I wanted you not to take any more drink in the second half, I wanted you not to have another glass.' He knew the end."

Burton was a man who seemed to throw it all away, who squandered his gifts, who claimed he wanted to play Shakespeare and teach the classics, but usually ended up drunk and on the set of another second-rate film.

Does playing him lead to repulsion?

"Well," says Henwood reflectively, "I came to the conclusion that he would be wonderful company, but there would be a time when you would say 'I'm leaving now'.

"Yes, wonderful company, but probably very difficult to live with."

Playing Burtonis on at The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, Wednesday until December 15. How much: $45/$40/$38. Bookings 9250 7777